The second Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence conference (SENS II) featured some very provocative ideas. The explicit objective of extending human life span indefinitely has opened a large rift between the meeting's organizer and those who believe he is acting unscientifically, perhaps recklessly. Two SENS conference participants present their views on the divisive nature of SENS.

Is vivisection-based science compatible with transhumanist values? According to the Declaration:7) Transhumanism advocates the well-being of all sentience (whether in artificial intellects, humans, posthumans, or non-human animals) and encompasses many principles of modern humanism.

But why do transhumanists, especially the buddhist-minded t-types (including myself) keep endorsing aubrey de greys vivisection based quest for immortality? Or perhaps we hope that eventually posthumans will resurrect the dead mice, uplift them, ask their forgiveness and finally upload them to virtual Edens?

George Dvorsky

Canadian futurist, science writer, and ethicist, George Dvorsky has written and spoken extensively about the impacts of cutting-edge science and technology—particularly as they pertain to the improvement of human performance and experience. He is a contributing editor at io9, the Chairman of the Board at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and is the program director for the Rights of Non-Human Persons program.